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Most Recent Adventures in Thought
Sunlight
Sunlight breaks through the leaves
Casting light upon the forest floor
Enticing the sapling to explode through
Reaching up to catch the bright rays
Characterize the Souls
A great pitfall of people is to characterize people.
Every human being is a complex soul of experiences, preferences, moral convictions, dreams, and pain. Each humans lives in a complex network of society surrounded by other people who are just as complex. Each person can only understand a handful of people deeply. It is impossible to know everyone. Given that, there is a powerful tendency to assume that people we don’t understand well are in fact a thin slice. That they can be summarized simply, and thereby discounted.
This oversimplify happens constantly in politics. Contrary ideas get oversimplified into straw-man arguments, and people get oversimplified into heartless straw-men. It is human nature, spawning from our ancestry as tribal groups to think of others outside our own groups as less.
This fallacy to assume people you don’t know well are less complex than people you do know well causes countless problems. To truly try to understand another from the perspective of a close friend takes a tremendous amount of thought and it is often easy to assume they are understood and discount them. This causes dehumanization and outrage at great scale.
The Reciprical Power of Action
Every outward action that a human being does, has a reciprocal internal action to that individual.
To love is to feel loved.
To hate to feel hated.
To hurt someone is to feel hurt yourself.
And so on…
This force which I think is stronger in some people than others pulls us to be good citizens and makes us miserable when we are not. To fully appreciate this power you need to be opened to the world and outwardly focused.
To love is the greatest joy a human being can experience. A new parents almost always feels the enormity of caring for and loving a child. And although raising a child is difficult and dynamic – the feeling of purpose and love makes the process imbued with joy.
This idea leads to a simple conclusion. The best way to be healthy mentally is to try to fix problems outside of oneself. The best self-work is often external work. Often a good start to getting out of a deep sadness can begin with someone simple like cleaning ones room. This cleaning also cleanses the soul in a small way. To maintain outward homeostasis maintains ones internal homeostasis.
I am not sure why this reciprocal process happens. One possibility is that human are so incredibly interconnected to their environment and other people, that actions on others affect us in the same way. We are fish swimming in water, and the when the water changes, so do we.
Reciprocal flow gives us an incentive to love the world and thus love ourselves. People often think of themselves as separate from the world, entities acting upon a world rather than within it. We are just separated by the thinnest of membranes from our surrounding – and the membrane itself maybe itself an illusion. We are the world.
To me, this makes loving inanimate objects seem more reasonable. While stuffed animals can’t feel joy, we can by our care of them. Of course caring for a living creature has added benefit. It provides another side for accepting love, but half as good is still good.
Let me suggest that the next opportunity you have to forgive another or love another or help another it will impact you as powerfully as it affects another. This is perhaps the single greatest power of being human.
As we create our environment we also create ourselves. As we destroy our environment, we destroy ourselves. There is no escape from this universal truth.
Escape
I’m escaping something from within.
Shutting it out and casting it aside anyway I can.
It’s in the less subtle behavior of clicking again or sipping again
but it also happens in the moments where there is nothing else to shut it out
Turning on the music, or casting my focus to anything else
Everything else, but the hole within
The feeling that there is no middle, but only an end
This moment feels empty by itself
There is no joy, but
pleasure itself is the meekest feelings
I need purpose. I crave it without knowing what I crave.
Like a baby weeping until its unidentified need is quenched.
Perhaps as a true adolescent confined in adulthood, I want to break out.
Will my gnawing for more free me or just leave me emptier than before.
My life philosophy has become so thin,
I may break through the ice into the unforgiving water below.
Will life always feel like this,
and if it will does that mean that the only choice is to radically grow.
The idea of growth brings me joy,
but the practice fills me with the deep pain of inadequacy and the fear of the unknown.
Am I bound for greatness or am I bound to keep an illusion never filled.
Is change possible when I have no will.
I am Pinocchio,
a will-less boy willing for one – but with no powerful force to transform me.
I want, but have no structure to get past the wanting – I am flimsy,
only held up by my notions of obligation.
I fear there is no fire in me, only an open pit.
“Climb in” – never spoken.
I have no connection – because I cannot connect myself.
Frozen in deep waters, waiting for a global shift.
Shift – shift – shift, I am waiting
Someone holds a gun
but who fires it
Is it the mind – no
Is it the body – no or else only mechanistically
Rather, it is the soul – the feelings – the spark
That kills and that saves
Me
Overwhelm
All of life is building towards a terrible crescendo that I can’t halt or handle. The deep sublime terror: a feeling that I am not living my life, but rather it is being lived and wasted for me. The consequences of my life lived seems to be a sleepwalkers embellishments, which flake apart once even the most meager light is cast upon them. Terribleness about myself and by extension the world cycle; or perhaps that is backwards. Need to escape is billowing my sails and consuming my thoughts just for the breeze to leave and strand me in the middle of a calm ocean. No immediate danger, but the creeping knowledge that sips of salt water will be the final undoing. I don’t want to work. I’m not ready to die. From pragmatic experience, I’m not ready to live either.
A Plain Before Me
I see the rest of my life, a vast plain of time stretched before me like cotton sheets before a deep sleep. Open and filled with the dreams of flickering possibility. Now more than ever, I feel the pressure of a life wasted. Each week is now not a stepping stone to the next week, but it’s own contained experience that will never be again. There is nothing to be gained, but the experience of life itself. A life wasted is one spent lusting instead of living. Or perhaps a life wasted is one where there is no dreaming. I do know that life is beginning to accelerate at the pace of a racehorse. I know deeply within me if I don’t take steps to slow it, the acceleration won’t stop until the finish line. A finish line in which there may not be any more races. In fact, it’s not a race at all. Perhaps it is a walk through a meadow and sometimes with a rush of excitement you leap forward, or skip for a few steps. But if I begin to sprint to the edge of the meadow, I will realize there are no other meadows. This is the only one. I want to smell as many roses as I can reach.
Work has become spattered with anxiety in a way that I know is not sustainable. I need a perspective shift or to flee for my life. If this continues I will crumble into something much worse and weaker. If I hate my work I will hate myself and if I hate myself I will hate life. A hatred of life is maybe a hatred of God himself. Of the origin of life and is something to be reviled against at all costs. To maintain a pure spirit may be my most important imperative – To continue to see the silver glow around the clouds.
Max-imum Barks
“Uhh yeah, I’ll have the… coffee please.”
“How would you like your coffee, sir?”
“Umm, I’ll just have it uh, plain… Thank you.”
I felt the next three people in line cringing, and honestly I couldn’t blame them. I was taking a girl out on a date to get coffee, and I didn’t even like coffee. I cleared my throat and turned to Emily. I considered several ways to begin small talk but instead I just stood there like an idiot for a few seconds. I was about to ask how she was doing before the cashier cut me off with her miserable voice.
“That will be $6.34 sir.”
I paid for our coffee and we found a nice high table to sit at by the window. I glanced down at my seat and noticed a few bread crumbs on it. Normally I would have brushed them off casually and sat down, but today I had a date. I weighed my options, and decided it was too soon to do anything that might jeopardize this date. My jeans could handle a few crumbs anyway. I took a seat and watched her sip her coffee in silence before deciding it was worth opening my mouth.
“So,” I said, elongating the vowel for a tad too long, “How are you?”
“I’m doing pretty well actually. Thanks for taking me out here. I like this place a lot,” she said, glancing around at the shop’s simple design. I always thought this place was absolutely dreadful, but at least I did one thing right.
“Of course. I love this place. I come here for coffee all the time,” I replied, digging myself deeper into this hole.
“Wow,” she said, with a soft giggle, “I can’t believe I’ve never seen you here before.” Luckily before I could respond, she continued, “Hey look I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to use the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She smiled at me before heading towards the bathroom. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. This whole dating thing was hard work already. I got up and threw out my coffee, and glanced down at my phone. A notification marked the home page, along with an abstract, vaguely dog-shaped icon, over a blue background.
“Max’s activity is higher than usual! Tap here to see what he’s thinking.”
I opened the BarkMeter app out of habit and read through his last few thoughts.
“Hi!” “Hi!” “Hi friend!” “Hi!” “What’s this?” “Where is Stephen?”
I smirked at the thought of my dog missing me. It’s crazy, I thought, how quickly technology develops. Just a couple years ago we never could have imagined being able to read our pets’ thoughts like this. And now that we’ve found out their thought patterns mostly revolve around saying hi to everyone and everything, we mostly just ignore what our pets are thinking.
I was glancing through some of Max’s more coherent thoughts about fire hydrants and squirrels when Emily came back. The rest of the date went surprisingly well and I left the not-so-bad-anymore coffee place with a big grin on my face.
As I headed out to my car, my phone vibrated violently, startling me out of my daydream. I could never quite figure out how to make that thing buzz at a consistent intensity; no matter what it would sometimes go completely unfelt, usually only for important things, and sometimes it would feel like an earthquake. I shook my head amused and retrieved my phone from my front pocket. I was again notified of Max’s increased activity. Opening his thoughts only returned a bunch of jumbled characters. Whether it was a bug in the system or Max was just that excited, I put it out of my mind and resumed my skippy walk straight into my car. I fumbled for the keys while making sure nobody saw me bump into my bright red SUV.
When I got home, Max greeted me with about a thousand licks as usual, and I scratched him behind his ears the way he loved it.
“Hi Stephen! Hi! I love you Stephen!” read BarkMeter when I opened my phone. I smiled again and read over my dog’s profile.
Max
Breed: Corgi
Age: 3 years
Gender: Male
Height: 10.5 inches
Favorite phrase: Hi!
Out of all my friends’ dogs, not a single one had a favorite phrase other than “Hi!” It was cute. I continued reading over the familiar words.
Nature: Relaxed
Favorite food: BarkMix™
Max never had BarkMix, but BarkMeter always liked to promote its own brand. I couldn’t blame them, though, since they offered their software for free.
Average activity: Medium-high
Today: Extremely high
Average distance walked: 8 miles
Today: 17 miles
Average time outside: 3 hours
Today: 8 hours
That’s strange, I thought, he must have found a way to sneak outside. Ignoring the rest of the stats, I went over to the recorded video page, but the only thing that was there was a few minutes of him playing with my pillow. It’s amazing how often the video recorder fails to record anything, I thought, given that it can literally read my dog’s thoughts. Either way, I’ll need to wash my pillow and figure out how he got out.
I wasted the rest of the day watching tv and playing games, determined not to do anything of value. I ordered a pizza, knowing that my fridge was full, and that I would have to eat the whole thing. By the time I was ready to sleep, my alarm clock read 12:38 AM. I yawned, stepping towards my bed, but something caught me off guard. It took me a moment to realize there was sand all over the floor. I briefly wondered how it got there before forgetting about it, deciding I would clean it up in the morning. I fell asleep with my arms around Max’s soft belly.
I woke up at my usual time, leaving enough time to get ready and make it to work with about thirty seconds to spare, while conveniently forgetting about the sandy mess on the floor. I offered my coworker Sean a cheerful smile, to which he responded by turning his back to me as usual. When I stepped into my office I opened up a spreadsheet from four months ago on my computer and fetched my phone from my pocket, trying to remember the last time I did anything at my job. Two notifications marked my homepage.
A BarkMeter notification read “Max is feeling lonely. Tap here to send him a voice message!” I ignored it and eagerly opened the text message from Emily.
“Hey, I had a really good time with you today. I hope we can meet up again sometime soon. – Sent 1:10 AM”
I was startled by the response, but I couldn’t hold back the smile that was quickly spreading across my face. I began my reply.
“I’m really glad you had a good time, I did too. I was thinking we coul-”
My boss stepped in and I quickly threw my phone on the ground and tried to look busy.
“Good to see you on time as usual Stephen.”
“Good morning, how are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. What are you working on today?”
“W-Well,” I cleared my throat, “I’m working on aggregating data from our website usage. General information like the average age of our users or-”
“That’s good to hear. Keep me updated.”
He left as suddenly as he showed up, and I took a deep breath. Luckily he didn’t notice the “Last edited: 4 months ago” message at the top or that the document was still in view-only mode. I picked up my phone and finished my message to Emily, suggesting we go out to dinner on Wednesday night.
BarkMeter reminded me of Max’s loneliness again, and I figured I might as well respond.
“Hey bud! I’m at work right now, so I’m sorry I can’t spend time with you, but I promise I’ll take you for a walk when I get home.”
I watched his perspective as the message played twice. He darted out from under my bed and licked the speaker a few times, panting excitedly. That’s strange, I remembered, I didn’t see him before I left for work today. He must have been sleeping under my bed.
Max used to hate being under my bed. He saw a spider under there once when he was a couple months old, and he refused to go back there since. I had no problem with it, but I was glad he was warming up to the place. Maybe adding in a small blanket helped.
The memory was interrupted by a reply from Emily.
“That sounds great! I’ll see you then. And I can’t wait to meet Max. 🙂 – Sent 10:22 AM”
I really liked her. She was really sweet and funny, and she liked dogs. I was glad I had an excuse to have her over. Max would like her a lot.
The rest of my day passed quickly, and I was still excited about my date with Emily. When I got home, I couldn’t hold back my excitement, and I laughed while shouting for Max. But my happiness quickly turned to concern when he did not come running to me. I called out a few more times.
“Max! Max? Max, where are you? This isn’t funny Max! Come out, we’re gonna go for a walk!”
Nothing. I looked all around my house for him, even under my bed, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I ran outside and checked my yard, but he didn’t show up there either. I sprinted around the block and still found no trace of him. I continued shouting his name, panicked, until one of my neighbors came outside.
“Is everything alright?” said the old man. I always liked Mr. Lee.
“I can’t find Max. I don’t know where he went. I’ve been looking everywhere for him. Have you seen him?” I answered, my voice shaking.
“No I haven’t,” he said with a frown, “You should file a police report. Don’t worry. He’ll show up eventually.” Mr. Lee offered a kind smile, which calmed me somewhat.
“Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Thank you.”
I filed the missing dog report and drove around for another hour, before coming home exhausted.
“Oh Max, where could you be?” I sighed, collapsing onto the couch. As I nodded off with the tv on, I swore I felt something lick my face. Too tired to open my eyes, I fell asleep smiling.
Spider’s Web
Tossed syllables crashed together
meanings scrambled and cheesed
clunky nothings drenched for good measure
Meaning needs a metamorphosis
Is a puzzle crafted out of yarn
or carved from rock
A single simple truth lies at every puzzles hollow core
Hollow, no one pays for hollow
The truth is hollow
The trick gives life
Spiders were always employed
Insects like liquefying
All slurped down into gut
Where the meaning lies
Spiders scrape for work
Pinching and patching
webs of wonder
Unemployed spiders rot
Bugged and solid
We cry
Tears of iron apathy because
gumption clogs spirit
All Night No Sleep
All night no sleep
tumbling soft-cotton daydreams
bright night splashed skin
Drought fullness undercover
Lost rest replaced with unease
Knot cold ice
Warm sheets stifle
Wake up sleepy head
Heady sleep calls
Blaring stars pull out of water
SMASH!
Sink back down to depths
Call from far
Reply in inches
A yell deserves a yell
A call deserves a whisper
Swift sleep calls for swift openings
Whispers yell
Beneath the sheets
Under the skin
Entangled
The man says only sleep and love
But love doesn’t come
Rocket away to the land of morning
Restless nights lead to restless days
The master of the blaring strikes
Again, again, again
Smokey eyes and soft cotton
All night no sleep
Sunshine
I imagine soft pricks of lush green grass against flesh
A half-hidden sun illuminating my face to a warm glow
The incessant chirp of – I can’t
It’s hell, Flames wrapped around my soul freezing it with cynical desolation
The shy sun walks as I do, hiding behind briefly illuminated trees, and continuing to morph slowly to a delicious pink
The gleeful sounds of children learning to tumble down a yellow slide and then eagerly bounding back up
To waste more of their precious time in fruitless ventures at fulfillment
I sit on the bench, slowly lowering my body until the bench holds me
“These kids must be disillusioned” the thought circles in my head, lowering itself to pick off a section of meaty retort
“I must be disillusioned”
I spring up, being my age this occupation takes me multiple moments of absent-minded concentration
One of the toddlers topples down the slide, going head of over heels and then once more
The toddler’s enormous eyes lift and fill with a sadness completely ignorant of all pain but his own
His eyes search for his custodian and when they lock upon her, he pauses
For mere seconds he focuses utterly on her
Silently asking if it is indeed okay for his world to implode because of the trauma he has just faced
My mind wonders to the mother giving a smile and a reassuring nod, and the toddler springing forth and continuing back up the slide, as if the entire event was only a unimportant illusion
But, alas instead the tentative custodian’s face transforms into one of maternal fear and consternation
The toddler’s world breaks
Shattering all that was or ever would be in a spontaneous cyclone
Wiping out all the impending joy he may have had on that yellow slide
I walk on, the sun following, as an intrigued stranger
Although not directly pestering me, it makes me uneasy, looming over with some greater, unknown purpose
As I peer over my shoulder I see the child waddling over to its caregiver, weeping for the world to cease rather than having to endure his torment for a moment more
The rest of the children play, even happier to have one less nuance expending there primary source of entertainment
As I turned, a shaggy creature presents itself twenty paces forward
When I come to the battered companion, it perches its hindquarters on the grass
Its furry head rotates in lazy but genuine intrigue
A warm smile, the first smile starts to creep across my tired face
My leather hand moves down to touch the fluffy animal
When my hand approaches the scruffy fur, it does not make contact
Not rustling the dogs shaggy head a single hair
The inferno of time rushes back and brings tangible fear to my senses
Once the intangibility of the unknown frightened me, but now the tangibility of the know does just the same
I make it to my house
I sit next her, the single soul I have eternally been able to endure
I rest myself on the hand-woven seat of the old rocker and turn my body to face her
She intently weaves a garment from yarn, her hands elegantly moving to fashion the article
She finishes for the time, and stares out the window into the pubescent night
Her hand rests on her velvet armchair and makes a crescent
I tentatively advance my hand toward hers and surround it
Her eyes shoot toward me, but seem to stare beyond me as if I’m not there
What torment, forced to be together, but alone, unable to reconcile
I move my hand up to her face, in some vague attempt to ease her, but it passes though her face and she turns back toward the window
Forever alone, I stare at her for minutes more, and I know there is only one option
To bring her antediluvian spirit plummeting past pain and despair instantaneously to something so-ever more infinity, but yet so-ever more soft and kind.
I must be the hand of death that pulls her past the diaphanous barrier that defines the undefinable
I shall pull her closer to me in the most meaningful way, while otherwise forcing her away from everything else she loves or cherishes
I know this is not the only option
I must pass on and leave the bland-cheer of life behind